Norway: Due for delivery on July 15 (and proudly going on show at IBC in Amsterdam in September) OB Team’s latest 16 camera, single-expanding HD OB truck is also being kitted out with 3D capability by Sony Professional.

“It’s the first 3D truck in the region, though that’s not really being driven by customer demand just now,” comments OB Team CEO, Bjørnar Nordahl. “But because it’s a new truck and we could get a good deal with Sony, we went for the 3D integration, even though we don’t have any contracts for 3D production right now.

“What Sony can offer us more than other companies is their knowledge of 3D productions and we have also been offered a certain amount of educational help for our freelance and production staff. All that helped make it a good deal for us,” he continues.

Spec on the new vehicle is fairly standard, the unit being kitted out with a combination of Sony HDC-1500s and P1 cameras, a 152×208 Miranda router, Riedel Artist 128 intercom, and all based around a Sony MVS-7000x vision mixer. “The truck is based on a “standard” 13,6 semi trailer. What is not so standard is the design, where we have a quite good storage room in the aft of the truck, similar to the storage rooms we have in the regular tender vehicles. This is to save the operational cost in a country where we move the “circus” around more or less every night,” says Nordahl.

“We have a quite spacious production gallery, though if we have an 8 camera 3D production it will be quite crowded compared to the normal 2D layout. But it’s possible to make sure everyone is comfortable,” he continues.

Primarily, the truck is a workhorse aimed at mid-sized productions and up, and joins a fleet of seven HD vehicles that command a highly impressive 90% market share in their home country and put in an average of 170 production days a year each. He admits that the 3D capability is probably taking a bit of a punt at this moment in time (even though there’s interest in mounting opera productions, for instance, the country’s 3D capable cinemas could only accommodate an audience of around 5000, making the business model looking slightly shaky). That said, like most things 3D, it has sparked interest.

“After we sent out the information about it having the 3D capabilities built in, we got quite a lot of phone calls from possible customers that would like to try this out,” he says.

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